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MRes Humanities and Cultural Studies
| Ariadne Arendt Vanessa Bartlett Lucy Bayley Jacob Blandy Edmund Bolger Fiona Boundy Luke Crimmens Maximilian Goldman Johanna Hateley |
James Hawthorne Andrew Hewish Elizabeth Johnson Erica Macarthur Emily McCarthy Ritra Teresa O’Connell Justin Ross Yana Yankova |
PhD Humanities and Cultural Studies
MA Film Curating
| Ruth Alonso Marian Briozzo Francis Chen Katie Croft Julia Fryett Danya Hannah Yao Wen Hsu Lene Juliussen Ali Khalil Ruoqie Li Elizabeth Miller Beatrice Read Giulia Saccogna Molly Silverstein Hilary Smith Rhea Srivastava Fan Chi Wahn |
Biographies
Ross Exo Adams holds a Master of Architecture from the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, NL, and a BS in Biomaterial Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has worked as an architect and urban designer for MVRDV, Foster & Partners, Arup and Productora among others. He has taught at the Berlage Institute and at Brighton University, and currently teaches at the Architectural Association. His writing and design work have been published in journals such as Radical Philosophy, Log, Thresholds, Project Russia and others. Currently, his Ph.D. examines circulation as an urban paradigm and its relationship to the construction of liberal politics. He was awarded the RIBA 2011 LKE Ozolins Studentship.
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Mohamed Almubarak holds an MRes in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium (2009). Working as an IT professional, he holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Bahrain (1995) and an M.Sc. in Management of Information Technology from the University of Sunderland, UK (2002). His IT work experience has mainly been spent in the banking sector, where his latest post is Manager of Investment Systems in a major bank in Doha, Qatar.
Mohamed’s research at the London Consortium revolves around the culture of information and the ubiquity of the of the activities of collection, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information in contemporary society. It uses the ‘computer database’, the site of storage and retrieval of information and therefore deeply ingrained in the cultural functioning of contemporary society, as its object of study. Other specific research interests include the analysis of information content of social activities, and the social significance of Information Retrieval and Information-seeking behaviors. Besides his research and Information Technology career, Mohamed is interested in Translation. He has translated many articles for the ‘Culture’ sections in local newspapers and magazines in Bahrain since 2007, as well several Art Exhibition booklets from English to Arabic and vice versa. Follow Mohamed on academia.edu.
Alan Ashton-Smith has a BA in English Literature and an MA in Studies in Fiction from the University of East Anglia. He is writing a PhD thesis on Gypsy Punk, which examines the genre’s use of ‘gypsy’ and ‘immigrant’ figures.
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Edwina Atlee completed her BA and MA in English Literature at the University of Leeds. She wrote her dissertation on word play in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor. She also set up the magazine and club night Bad Taste. She has since been working in London, most recently at St. George’s Hospital. She writes freelance for Time Out and Intelligence Squared and has had poetry published in Poetry and Audience. She is hoping to write her PhD on Michael Chabon and Jonathan Safran Foer and is currently investigating the Jewish tradition of eruv.
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Burhanuddin Baki graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004, double-majoring in theoretical mathematics and analytic philosophy, with a minor in creative writing. After working as a researcher and lecturer in mathematics and philosophy for several years, as well as writing scripts for Malaysian television, he completed his Masters in 2009 under the supervision of Christopher Fynsk at The Centre for Modern Thought, University of Aberdeen. His Masters thesis was a close expliqué of a short essay by Maurice Blanchot on the idea of the neutre. Burhan’s current research project at The London Consortium is to pursue Alain Badiou’s equation of mathematics and ontology through an investigation into the mathematical field of combinatorics and its relation to the problematic of the event.
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Vanessa Bartlett is an art writer and events producer. She has been published in The Guardian and writes regularly for this is tomorrow. Her public speaking engagements have included talks at Tate Liverpool, Belgrade Museum of Applied Arts and The Slovenian Society for Aesthetics in Ljubljana. In 2008 she curated the exhibition and event programme Slowness for Liverpool Biennial, which was selected as a visual art must see by Times critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston. Vanessa has produced digital art and performance for a number of significant international venues and platforms including FACT, Liverpool and Mobile Academy, Berlin. Her research at The London Consortium focuses on psychologically transgressive behavior documented through performative art practices and information technology. She writes about drinking too much and being a mental on her blog Group Therapy.
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Susanne Bauer is an architect who recieved her Diploma from the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, Germany and her MA in Histories and Theories of Architecture from the Architectural Association. She has been working in practices in Germany and the USA and since 2004 has worked for Foster and Partners in London. She joined the PhD programme to continue her theoretical work focused on 20th century Art and Architecture. Her main interests are the consistency and the contradiction in movements such as Modernism and Postmodernism and she hopes to explore them by means of colour and its counterpart whiteness.
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Petri Berndtson received his BA and MA from the University of Helsinki in the Department of Philosophy. His Master’s thesis was an examination of breathing from the perspective of transcendental philosophy. In his PhD thesis, Petri will continue his transcendental project of breathing. His main interests are Phenomenological Philosophy, Eastern philosophy, different Methods of Breathing, Philosophy of Religion (mysticism) and stand-up comedy as a way of philosophizing. Petri has taught philosophy for many years in the Lahti University of Applied Sciences.
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Shaun Bertram holds degrees in psychology (BA) and sociology (BA Honours, MA) from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she also worked part-time as a lecturer and teaching assistant. Her doctoral dissertation research is an analysis of motivational art in the contemporary Anglo-American workspace and builds on her previous research in the areas of contemporary managerial ideology, 20th century Western warfare, and visual culture and embodiment.
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Erik Boman is a PhD student and fiction writer interested in how cutting-edge scientific developments and speculations are portrayed in literature. His research at the London Consortium concerns genetic engineering and contemporary novels. He has a BA in Journalism from James Cook University in Australia and an Mst in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford, UK. He was born in Sweden and now lives in the UK.
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Fiona Boundy is a Curator and Producer who holds a BA in Fine Art from Norwich School of Art and Design. Between 2000 and 2005, she held the post of Gallery Director at Gasworks, London and was responsible for delivering a programme of exhibitions and projects which were mainly new commissions and focused on introducing international artists to London and providing emerging artists with significant professional development opportunities. From 2006 - 2008, Fiona was the Director of Exhibitions and Development at A Foundation, Liverpool and was responsible for establishing Greenland Street, an exhibition space devoted to the commissioning of ambitious and risk taking new works. During this period significant commissions included Sleep if Ulro by Goshka Macuga which led to her subsequent Turner Prize nomination and Triangle of Need by Catherine Sullivan which was a co-commission with The Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis and The Royal Academy, London. From 2008 until present, Fiona has worked as a freelance curator and consultant and has developed projects and exhibitions such as We can Create, Art, Craft and Community for the Crafts Council, London and Props, Events and Encounters for The British Council in Athens. Fiona is also currently delivering the Artlands series of public realm commissions in North Kent and working with The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow on a capital campaign.
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Belinda Bowring previously studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, completing a BA in History of Art and MA in Postmodernism in the American Context. Formerly the Managing Editor of frieze magazine, her writing has appeared in numerous publications including frieze, The Times and i-D. Her PhD research is on the politics of appropriation; focusing on artwork that acts as an interruptive device, co-opting the tactics of an existing societal system.
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Marian Briozzo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and grew up in Madrid, Spain. She studied Film Production in Madrid’s Film & Media School, ECAM (Escuela de Cine y del Audiovisual de la Comunidad de Madrid) and has worked as a post-production supervisor since 1999. Throughout her post-production career, Marian has collaborated in more than 25 films with internationally renowned directors such as Alejandro González Iñárritu, Tran Ang Hung, Steven Soderbergh, Oliver Stone and Carlos Saura, to name a few. Marian is currently undertaking the MA in Film Curating.
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Nathaniel Budzinski studied Sound Design at London College Of Communications and Fine Art & History Of Art at Goldsmiths College, University Of London. His research focuses on entertainment, ‘edutainment’, factual TV and film. Nathaniel also writes about art and music and is online editor at The Wire magazine. representativetrust.co.uk
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Elizabeth Cetin holds degrees in Economics and Latin American Studies (BA, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota), Public Policy (MPA,School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York) and Development Studies (MSc -School of Oriental and African Studies, London). After working in finance, and on public sector projects, she is now a PhD candidate at the London Consortium. Her research interests are concerned with feminist art theory and consciousness outside the overall gender mainstreaming agenda.
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Ingrid Chen majored in English Literature in National Central University, Taiwan before coming to London (BA). As a constant traveler among cultures, she finished her MA in Comparative Literature in University College London writing about politicized nostalgia in both European and Asian literature, focusing on the special case of her place of birth- Taiwan. Falling in love with London, Ingrid then became interested in history of art and museum studies, and completed a certificate in history of art at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her never-ending passion of shopping blended with her fascination with museum shops and formed her recent interest in the branding of art institutions and the institutionalization of department stores as commissioners and patrons of art in London. Observing shop window design has become her new “window” to discover a city. The issues of public art, urban landscape and accessibility of art reside in shop windows will be her future focus and also her PhD thesis. Ingrid will be traveling again between Europe and the Far East comparing the culture of shop window designs and keep digging into the relationship between consumerism and art in history.
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Ya Wen Chen studied Journalism at Fu Jen Catholic University before she entered Institute of Art Studies of National Central University in Taiwan. Her MA thesis examines the Taiwan movie posters within the context of visual culture. Based on her interests in media and popular culture, she worked as copywriter in advertising, TV playwright and marketing planner of indie record labels. After several years of working, she intends to pursue a more profound knowledge with a critical perspective in the academic field. Her current main interests are illustrations and early sci-fi movies.
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Eu Jin Chua is from Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He holds degrees in English literature, architectural studies, and film and media studies, and spent one semester in engineering school (a long time ago). His article on the American multimedia artist Laurie Anderson appeared in Postmodern Culture in 2006, and a review essay was published in the Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature this year. He recently served as a research assistant on the film Derek (a biographical documentary of Derek Jarman, directed by Isaac Julien), which screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last summer, after showing at the Sundance Film Festival and the Serpentine Gallery. He spent the summer of 2007 at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University where he became a diehard Spinozist (and possibly a Jamesleuzian?). He is currently interested in art, film, ecological thought, aesthetic theory, materialist thought, science studies, and the history of philosophy, and is writing his thesis on classical film theory and ecological thought. He was a 2005-2008 Commonwealth Scholar and a Wingate Scholar in the 2008-2009 academic year.
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Barbara Chomicka is a qualified project manager and chartered architect with 8 years’ experience. She is currently managing the design stage of one of the largest regeneration schemes in the North West, BBC Media City in Manchester. Barbara’s research aims to assist solutions to the topics spotlit in ‘Towards an Urban Renaissance’ (1999), and ‘Towards a Strong Urban Renaissance - The Urban Renaissance six years on’ (2005), the ground-breaking official and independent reports of the Urban Task Force chaired by Lord Rogers of Riverside. Changing the way we see what housing actually is seems to be the key, rather than the process of delivering new residential development. Barbara aims to assist shifting this viewpoint, by evidence and argument, and encourage new thought. How can we change people’s views? How can demand for high-density compact homes be aroused? Barbara’s research is based on theoretical study, and her personal experience in the UK, United States and Poland.
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Yu Ling Chou was a research assistant in the Graduate School of Arts & Technology at Taipei National University of the Arts. She received her MA degree in Taiwan, worked on the ‘Taiwan Media Art Archives’ project, and her research interests mainly focus on photography and media art theory. up
Elinor Cleghorn Elinor Cleghorn’s PhD research concerns the implication of the making body in the production of cinematic spectacle. She curated the BFI/London Consortium season ‘Maya Deren: 50 Years On’, a dedicated programme of events and screenings commemorating the 50th anniversary of the filmmaker’s death. Elinor has participated in several international research events and symposia, and has recently given talks on Maya Deren’s filmmaking at Camden Arts Centre and Nottingham Contemporary and contributed to ‘The International Journal of Screendance’. She lectures in visual art and performance at University of Brighton, and lives by the sea with her husband and two small boys.
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Paul Craddock achieved a First Class BA (Hons) in Music but was dissatisfied with the limits of the field, as music never happens inside of a vacuum. He wanted some way to work with sound and its context so he did an MA (by Research) in Performing Arts. After his MA, he worked as a Research Assistant with the NHS and became interested in hospitals and medical establishments and what happens in them. His PhD with the Consortium is where the two ‘creative’ and ‘medical’ strands of his life converge. His thesis is entitled The Poetics of Bodily Transplantion, 1702-1902. Paul is a holder of the London Consortium and Science Museum’s Science and Humanities studentship.
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Elena Crippa graduated cum laude in Communication Sciences with a specialisation in Museology from the University of Trieste, Italy, and was awarded an MA with distinction in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. She has worked on independent curatorial projects in London and Argentina, where she conducted a research on ‘Archivo Grupo de Arte de Vanguardia’ as part of a residency at El Levante, Rosario. From 2006 to 2009, she has worked as artist liaison and associate director of exhibitions at Lisson Gallery, London. She is part of the London based curatorial collective RUN and has written essays and articles on the work on various artists. She has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Bursary to conduct a doctoral research on a project initiated by the Tate Research department:’Art School Educated’: Curriculum Development and Institutional Change in UK Art Schools 1960-2000.
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Bartek Dziadosz is a documentary filmmaker and film editor, a graduate of Law and Film Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and the Westminster Film School. He has previously worked for the Polish television channels TVN and TVP. As an editor he has recently finished working on a documentary about Lech Walesa directed by Agnieszka Piotrowska. He is currently working on his own documentary ‘The Trouble with Being Human These Days’ which is based on the sociological concepts of Zygmunt Bauman. He is a deputy director of the London Consortium TV . His Phd thesis is an attempt to revisit theory of film editing.
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Sian Evans grew up in Sydney, Australia and studied at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, graduating with an MA Art Administration (2000) and a BA Art Theory (1999). Her PhD focuses on the artist as restaurateur: food as a catalyst for invitational art through the 1990s and in contemporary practice. She is interested in the restorative nature of artworks that use food, whether it be to restore social relations, cultural exchange or to re-establish identity and whether this parallels or goes against current trends in society. She has also been awarded a Vivid Interdisciplinary Support Programme Bursary through which she is currently coordinating a food and art seminar and event series in Birmingham, to take place in February 2007.
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Christiane Fashek (MRes 2004) is an architect. She has studied urbanism, Beaux Arts and contemporary architecture at the University of Notre Dame, the Architectural Association’s Design Research Lab and the London Consortium. She teaches in the Diploma School at the AA. Christiane has worked on the City of Culture at Eisenman Architects in New York and frequently writes about architectural and cultural theory. Her London Consortium masters dissertation focused on urban initiatives in catastrophic aftermath; her PhD is a theoretical and philosophical interpretation of the urban architectural event.
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Rebecca Faulkner is a curator and arts programmer with a background in museum studies and historic preservation. She received her MA in Performance Studies from New York University in 1999 and holds a BA in English Literature from Leeds University. Her Ph.D. focuses on the adaptive re-use of religious buildings as museums and cultural centres, questioning what happens when art, literally as well as metaphorically, moves into the space once occupied by religion. Since 2000 she has been involved in regeneration projects in New York and London, notably the restoration of the Eldridge Street synagogue in lower Manhattan, and currently at the Grade II* listed Hornsey Town Hall in north London.
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Kasper Frederiksen is a writer and activist working on a PhD about post-situationist collective art practices with the working title: “Invisible Insurrections – The revolution in art and the art of revolution from the 1960es till today”. He is a founding member of the art collective floorless which has exhibited internationally as well as self-published various books and magazines. Additionally, he has collaborated with various international art collectives, written numerous catalogue texts and curated shows in London as well as Copenhagen. Research interests include (but are not limited to) avant-garde movements, cinematic surrealism, hallucinatory literature, street and public art, noise, new social movements, indie/underground/outsider scenes, anarchism, left communism, autonomous marxism, situationism and post-structuralism.
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Rob Gallagher received his BA and MSt. in English Literature from the University of Oxford. His doctoral research considers the treatment of corporeality and time in contemporary videogames. Rob’s fiction, criticism and illustrations have appeared in various publications, from Pigeons & Peacocks to The Observer. He is co-editor of Murdofleur.org.
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Alistair Gill BA (Hons), AADipl, MRes is an Architect. He graduated from the Architectural Association before his Masters at the London Consortium on ‘Henri Bergson: A New Organicism’. He is currently writing his PhD on ‘Time, Relationship and the Social: Badiou, Mathematics and the Non-Public’. He has served as Visiting Professor to the Graduate Schools of the University of Texas UTA and the Technical University of Ljubljana. For the last three years (ongoing) he has taught a design unit at the Architectural Association, and continues to teach both in the U.S. and Europe. He is Co-Founder of the Architectural and Media Company ‘Impossible Productions Ink’.
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Max Goldman is from London and has a BA in Philosophy and Theology from the University of Oxford. Following graduation, he worked as a suit in the London ad agency Dare for a year and a half before returning to academia with the London Consortium. His interests include robots, tall buildings and cycling.
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Christopher Gonzalez-Crane is a native of San Francisco, California. He holds a BA in English from Carleton College. Most recently, he created and ran a photography department at a small progressive middle school. Christopher views his work as academic, teacher and artist as part of an always-unfolding process of discovery. Christopher’s research interests include Los Angeles, borders, enclosure, emerging forms of media and the detective novel. He enjoys walking, clear writing and big cities.
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Jonathan Gross has a BA in Social & Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge (2005), an MA in European Culture from University College London (2007), and an MRes in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium (2008). Using a combination of ethnographic fieldwork methods and analyses of written texts, his doctoral research investigates contemporary practices and experiences of listening at concert halls. His PhD is supported by an AHRC doctoral award, and is supervised by Steven Connor (Birkbeck) and Georgina Born (Cambridge).
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Cécile Guédon has completed a DEA in Comparative Literature in 2005 at La Sorbonne-Paris-IV and an M.A. in European Culture on a Marie Curie Scholarship at UCL in 2007. She is member of the Association for the Study of Comparative Theory and History of Literature and works as an Associate Editor for the International Journal for the Humanities. She works as a free-lance Editorial Assistant on the Complete Works of Voltaire, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford University and teaches French Language and Literature for the London Consortium since 2007. Cecile is mainly interested in High Modernist aesthetics and the notion of movement across the arts, which, she argues, is central to a renewed understanding of the period. In 2009 Cecile has presented papers on her PhD topic at Harvard University for the American Comparative Literature Association; at the University of Cambridge, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) for the British Comparative Literature Association; at Manchester University, for the Association of Art Historians; and at Stanford University, for the Society of Dance History Scholars.
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Lina Hakim holds a BA in Graphic Design (American Univesity of Beirut, 2001), an MA in Book Arts (Camberwell College of Arts, 2004) and an MRes in Humanities and Cultural Studies (London Consortium, 2009). Her research is concerned with how the play with and of scientific playthings (19th century instruments that become toys) creates knowledge, meaning and understanding. Lina practices as a graphic designer and artist – you can see some of her work/play here. She is one of the producers on the Thread, a discussion show on Resonance fm.
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Rikke Hansen holds a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College (University of London) and in 2003 she completed an MA in Aesthetics and Art Theory at Middlesex University. She has taught Critical Studies and Photographic Studies at Norwich School of Art and Design, and Contemporary Critical Studies in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths. She is an art critic and a regular contributor to the UK-based journal Art Monthly. Her current research centres on the interface between animal studies and 20th Century aesthetics, with particular reference to the works of Adorno and Derrida. The title of her PhD is: ‘The Sublime Animal: Contemporary Art and the Animal Aesthetic’. Her doctoral thesis is part of a larger three-year project at Tate Britain on ‘The Sublime Object: Nature, Art and Language’. The general Tate research project brings together scholars and practitioners from a variety of fields, from art, to curating, to art history, to philosophy, to literary criticism. It is funded by the AHRC’s Landscape and Environment scheme.
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Oliver Harris gained a BA in English Literature and an MA in Shakespeare studies at UCL. In between, he studied creative writing at UEA. He writes for the TLS and Bad Idea magazine. His PhD concerns the temptation to look, with particular focus on the myths of Actaeon and Orpheus.
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Katherine Hunt is working on a PhD about seventeenth-century church bells. She is a reviews editor for Critical Quarterly and a co-editor of Teller Magazine
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Timothy Ivison is an artist and writer from California currently enrolled in the doctoral program at the London Consortium under the supervision of Mark Cousins. He holds a BFA in Studio Practice and a BA in Visual and Critical Studies, both from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His thesis concerns the urbanisation of biology, focusing on the ways in which medical and biological practices historically shaped the norms and forms of the modern city. Timothy’s research interests include the histories of urban planning, architecture, and science, as well as contemporary art and experimental music.
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Hyder Jawad has a first-class BA (hons) degree in Humanities from Open University, an MA degree in European History from Birkbeck, University of London and an MRes in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium. He has been a sports writer for 22 years and has worked for The Times, The Independent, the South China Morning Post, the Birmingham Post, and the Liverpool Echo. He has also written a number of books about sport. Merging his interests in sport, social history, and fin-de-siècle journalism, he is researching the role of lawn tennis in the physical emancipation of women in England from 1874-1914.
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Elizabeth Johnson holds a BA in Sculpture at Camberwell College of Art (2007). Since graduating she has worked at Stephen Friedman Gallery, Artangel and The National Gallery. Her research interests include minimalist sculpture, ascetic ideals in artistic practices, and waiting and passivity in contemporary art.
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Sarah Joshi holds a B.A. in Classical Archaeology and a M.A. in Humanities. After finishing her M.A., she spent a year teaching Film, Fiction and Criticism for a Humanities and Philosophy department at a local college in California. While her M.A. thesis was on the missionary compulsion to write in the last quarter of the 19th century in India, her current PhD research concerns the development of the diasporic romance in contemporary Bollywood cinema and its transgression of the moral universe of the popular film. Sarah has two forthcoming publications, an article on the ‘Non-Resident Indian’ in Keywords in Modern Indian Studies, and an article on the Partition genre in The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises. She has been a member of the editorial board for The Thread, the Consortium radio show broadcast on Resonance FM, for the past two years.
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Mika Kioussis is a writer and filmmaker whose work explores the fractured image of self through the lens of art, medicine and philosophy. She holds an MA in Literature and Medicine from King’s College, London, and a BFA in Video and Performance from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Canada). Mika has been commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to create film and radio broadcasts, and her videos have been invited to festivals including the New York Short Film Festival and the Atlantic Film Festival. Mika joins the Consortium after three years as a Digital Artist in Residence at hospices throughout the UK where she produced films made by terminally ill patients and documentaries of palliative care issues. Mika’s PhD project addresses the increasingly public nature of death and dying from illness. She examines contemporary representations of the ill self in digital recordings, art and literature for their psycho-social traces and tension points with biopolitics.
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span class=”fontstyle_bold”>Jane Levi has a BA in English Literature from London University and an MA in Gastronomy from the University of Adelaide. Her MA dissertation was on space food, and led to several journal publications. It also indirectly brought her to her PhD thesis, which examines the role of food in utopian communities. She funds her work on utopia by working as a consultant providing policy advice on European financial market infrastructure.
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Chrystalleni Loizidou has studied Philosophy, Art History, Design, and Cultural Studies, at institutions with radically differing approaches to education and the arts. Her doctoral research employs a microhistorical approach, focusing on Archbishop Kyprianos Square in Nicosia, Cyprus. It uncovers the little-known stories of its commemorative artworks, considering how they each became appropriate within fluid but distinct media-scapes, corresponding to the re-articulation of ‘the Cyprus problem’ at four stages throughout the 20th century. She has worked as archivist, curator, editor and event manager. For 2011 she is taking a Research Associate position with the Cyprus University of Technology. She is organiser of THATCamp Cyprus 2011 and co-organiser of Re Aphrodite. She is looking forward to engaging further within the digital humanities, with a focus on academic cyber-infrastructure and e-learning.
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Alex Mackintosh holds a BA in Spanish and French and an MPhil in Latin American Studies from Trinity College, Cambridge. As a TV producer/director, he has made twelve documentaries for the BBC on everything from dog meat to the porn industry, as well as adverts for clients such as Nike and The Big Lunch. His PhD research concerns the relationship between the slaughterhouse and modernity from 1500 to the present day.
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Susan Mapstone completed her part-time MA in Modern Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2003, whilst working as sub-editor for a computing magazine. During her Masters dissertation, under the supervision of Steve Connor, she developed her interest in post-modern literature and concepts of entropy, which have now become the basis for her PhD. Her research focuses on theories of positive and negative entropy found in thermodynamics and information theory, as well as the applications these concepts may have in literature. Current research includes an investigation of entropy’s role in the development of cognitive psychology. Susan is also a lecturer in English and Psychology.
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Irini Marinaki studied photography and video art (BA) at Focus in Athens, Greece. She also holds a BA (Hons) in Art History and Critical Studies from Camberwell College of Arts and an MA in Art History from Goldsmiths College. Her PhD thesis explores the art critical and curatorial work of Nicolas Calas. Irini has worked as a photographer, curator and archivist for various institutions including the audiovisual collections of the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London), Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, the photographic archive of ELIA (Athens) et al. She was a founding member of the London Consortium’s web resource Static and served on its editorial board from 2005-2007. Irini conceived and co-organized Take a deep breath, a 3-day multidisciplinary conference and Shortness, a very short conference and a very long dinner, both at Tate Modern, London. Irini is co-director of Betting on Shorts (BoSs) and co-organiser of the short-film competition BoSs: More than a Eurovision of Shortfilm www.bettingonshorts.com
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Daniel Marrone has a BA in Cultural Studies (2007) from York University, in Toronto, and an MA in Communication and Culture (2009) from a joint graduate program between York and Ryerson University. In his research on nostalgia and the semiotic operations of comic books, he investigates the possibility that comics are particularly suited to longing for the past.
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Elizabeth Miller graduated with Honors from Washington University in St. Louis , earning a B.A. in Film & Media Studies and Psychology. She interned at Warner Brothers, working in development for De Line Pictures and New Line Cinema. Her main academic interests include the French New Wave, Alfred Hitchcock, feminist film theory and the cinematic representation of sexuality and gender.
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Jackie Mountain completed an MA in the Comparative History of Early Modern European Societies, during which she became interested in the way in which travel influenced intellectual life. A study of seventeenth century writings on volcanoes seemed to be a way to explore this topic, while utilizing previous degrees in Chemistry and History.
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Chrysoula (Elia) Ntaousani has a Diploma in Architectural Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and a Binational MA in Philosophy of Culture and Cultural Praxis from both Université Paris 8, France and Universität Stuttgart, Germany. She joined London Consortium’s MPhil/PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies after having investigated cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue at Groupe d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Mondialisations, Paris. She has co-edited ‘Paris-Der Architekturführer’ (Braun 2009) with Chris van Uffelen and has given papers at various international conferences, including the ‘Cultures of Mobilities 2010 International Conference’ (Aalborg, Denmark), the ‘Techno-topologies’ Conference (Darmstadt, Germany) as well as the RGS-IBS International Annual Conference 2011 (Royal Geographical Society, London). She has worked for the AHRC Artists’ Moving Image Research Network and is currently co-convenor of the Mediterranean Mobilities network. Her research at The London Consortium seeks to map HomeWorlds or trace HomeComings in the current state of increasingly interpenetrating societies and to open up a dialogue between homeland and homepage, reality and hyperreality, alterity and foreignness.
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Natalie Hope O’Donnell was born in Oslo and is currently based in London. She studied Modern History and Politics at Jesus College, Oxford and History of Art at the University of Oslo. She also holds a PGDL/LPC postgraduate degree in Law and graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Curating Contemporary Art in 2008, where her MA thesis was entitled ‘Global Feminisms: Transcultural Curating and Thematic Mega-exhibitions’, supervised by Jean Fisher. She has worked for the Norwegian National Touring Exhibitions, the DSV Network in Oslo, and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Curatorial projects and collaborations include Chelpa Ferro’s On/Off Poltergeist, An A-Z of Doubt at the Serpentine and Of This Tale… at the Royal College of Art Galleries. Curatorial research interests include issues of cross-cultural translation, alternative approaches to historiography and contemporary manifestations of the gothic and the sublime. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the London Consortium on art institutions and models of public engagement while working as a freelance writer, curator and translator.
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Senam Okudzeto is an artist and writer. She received her BA in Fine Art from the Slade (1995), MFA from the Royal College of Art (1997) and continued post graduate study at the Whitney Museum Independent Study program (1999-2000), and Harvard University, where she was a Radcliffe Institute Research Fellow (2003-2004). She has taught in universities in Switzerland and the USA, and is a member of the editorial board of the CAA publication Art Journal. Seman’s research topic for the London Consortium will investigate commodity fetishism, modernity, memory and material culture in the context of post-independence West Africa.
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Maya Oppenheimer can find proof of her interest in various manifestations of the past in all stages of her career plans. After an earnest childhood dedication to palaeontology, followed by horology, to her art school preoccupation with pre-industrial looms and tapestries, Maya moved to London from Winnipeg, Canada, in 2007 to take up an MA in Design History at the Royal College of Art. She is now pursuing a seemingly logical extension of the above interest - historical reenactment in art, film and leisure practice - in her PhD research. Maya has worked variously as an editor, curator and freelance researcher, but she has yet to participate in a reenactment event.
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Roger Orwell was born near Southampton, England. He has lived and worked in Sweden and central Spain and now lives in east London. He has wide-ranging interests in language theory, poetics, literature and fine art, and is currently exploring notions of language materiality in relation to art practice. He has an interdisciplinary first class honours degree in Linguistics and English Critical Theory from the University of Westminster, London, plus qualifications in teaching from Trinity College London and English Phonetics from The IPA at University College London. Creativity has always been there as a counterpoint to the theory, in music and words. After completing the MRes Humanities sand Cultural Studies programme at the London Consortium in 2008, he moved on to the doctoral programme in the same year. He presently teaches English language at The University of the Arts London.
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Jean Owen (MRes 2006) is writing a PhD thesis which negotiates the daughter-father model of incest through the Cyprian myth of Myrrha and Cinyras found in Book X of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and through the autobiographical writings of Anaïs Nin and Kathryn Harrison. Broadly speaking, Jean’s research areas include feminist theory, psychoanalysis, literature criticism and fairy tale. In recent years Jean’s artistic work has investigated father-daughter relationships through poetry and film.
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Tina Parte teaches German language and culture in the German Departments of University College London and Birkbeck College, University of London. Her main research interests lie in critical theory, cultural studies, gender studies and popular culture. She received an M.A. in Modern Languages from the University of Vienna, Austria and an M.A. in Gender, Culture, Politics from Birkbeck. She is currently working on her PhD thesis on the graffiti and wall art on the Berlin Wall.
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Shahina Rahman spent time working as a research assistant at the Institute of Psychiatry before deciding to return to academia. Previous to that she completed a BSc in Psychology (2003) and a MA in European Culture (2004); both at UCL. Her research interests include looking at the function of religion in the genre of fantasy, more specifically, the ‘marvellous’. Broadly speaking she hopes to identify how and why fantasy novels with religious themes and symbolism are so popular in this secular society today. She also has a (un)healthy interest in psychoanalysis and hopes to work that into her examination of fantasy. Her work at the Institute led her to co-author a paper to be published in the Medical Journal in March 2007.
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Valentina Ravaglia studied Art History at “La Sapienza” University of Rome, and completed an MA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2009. She has co-curated exhibitions such as Film as Subversive Art at Zoo 2009 and Contested Ground at Zabludowicz Collection in January 2009. She contributed to Il Libro Nero della Biennale di Venezia in the 2009 and 2011 editions (ed. E. Battisti), and published articles and reviews on printed and online magazines, including The Burlington Magazine, Art Licks, Supercream and LuxFlux. Her doctoral research project is titled ‘Aesthetic bricolage: strategies for the display of contemporary art as an epistemological interface with reality’.
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Jon Revell is a freelance production designer and producer making work both for his own production company and for others. His research centers around space, journey and narrative taking detours to explore the darker side of life, in all its glory. Jon has rather large curly blond hair which occasionally turns to ginger, a small cat called Evil Chutney; Lady of the Massacre and the tendency to listen to Radio 4 rather too much to be healthy. The rest is subject to change without notice.
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Seph Rodney was born in Jamaica and raised in the Bronx, New York. He has been a poet, a photographer, fencer and salesperson. In 2008, he, along with Nicky Falkof created the radio show, The Thread. He was the host and a primary producer of the show which still broadcasts about twice a year on Resonance FM. The PhD thesis he recently submitted investigates the ongoing instrumentalization of culture by examining the practice of museum visiting. The thesis historically re-contextualizes the visit, analysing it since its beginnings at the onset of modernity, and suggesting that the visit has become hyper-instrumentalized in a social context shaped by key social and economic changes of the last few decades. His research thus connects cultural practice to social policy. He looks to implement in a social policy setting, some of the ideas brought up by the thesis. Still, he prefers a good long novel under a mango tree in his mother’s backyard.
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Vasileios Sakkos has a BA in English Literature from the National University of Athens and an MA in Literature from the University Of Essex. His PhD research focuses on skin deformity and the way it is depicted through comic books, films and animation. He is immersed in escapist fiction and is constantly drowning in television waves and radio frequencies. He has a damaged eardrum (his left one) due to a Sunn0))) concert. He is a columnist in a comic book website (www.comicdom.gr) and even though he is no Carrie Bradshaw, he did present an award ceremony in a recent convention. His hero is Goatboy. He aims to please too.
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Stephen Sale (MRes 2003) is exploring the relationship between technology and culture through a critical appraisal of the work of German media theorist Friedrich Kittler. Kittler’s empirical investigations into the relationship between media technologies and discourse force us to reconsider the role of technology in literary and historical analysis and can serve to inform complementary tendencies in literary studies and the history of science. Stephen’s continuing work as a technology analyst also informs his PhD research. Stephen has an MRes from the London Consortium and a first degree in political theory.
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Lauren Sapikowski holds a BA in Art History and a BA in Theatre from Washington & Lee University and an MA in Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute for Art. Her research focus is on art responding to ‘the disappeared’ in Latin America, particularly the way in which art used to memorialise and to heal victims and their families can play out on a global, cross-cultural, scale. She is also interested in the psychology of art and grief and displaying artwork as a means of mourning.
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Shain Shapiro is originally from Toronto, Canada, exploring his PhD in the socio-cultural history of music funding and international relations. Prior to this, he received his MA from the University of Amsterdam and his BA jointly from McMaster University in Canada and the University of Leeds. In addition to his research, he is the head of UK/EU for the Canadian Independent Music Association.
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Molly Silverstein received her BA in American Studies with a concentration in film from Yale University in 2011. Her academic interests include film, gender studies, and history. Her undergraduate education culminated in a senior thesis on male prostitution in American film. She spends the bulk of her free time reading mediocre popular history books and watching late night TV documentaries.
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Hilary Smith recently completed her BA in Drama and English at the University of Bristol. On the MA Film Curating course, she wishes to investigate the digital dissemination of film and film art, as well as the current business practices of 21st century Hollywood generally. Hilary grew up in Toronto, Canada, and is obnoxiously proud of the technological and creative contributions her country has made to the movies.
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Vasilis Stroumpakos studied at Architectural Association AADRL (MArch with Distinction), and at AUTH, Thessaloniki. He is co-author of the ramtv.org Negotiate My Boundary! book. With ramtv.org he has lectured and exhibited in Austria, Italy, Germany, Greece, Slovenia, UK and the USA. He has been awarded by FEIDAD, Miami Bienale Possible Futures and the Plecnick Institution. He has been an AA Research Fellow (2000-2004), and appointed teaching stuff at AA Diploma and the Design Research Laboratory. He has undertaken commissions on graphic and web design for a variety of clients including the Royal College of Art, Framestore CFC, the Architectural Association, the Greek National Museum of Contemporary Art, Zaha Hadid Architects. In 2002 he launched 00110.org, a web site featuring works on code, architecture, installation and web design.
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Ahmad Sukkar is a PhD candidate at the London Consortium. Supervised by Samer Akkach and Neil Leach, his doctoral thesis Structures of Light: Body and Architecture in the Islamic Tradition looks at the intricate relationship between philosophy, mysticism, cosmology, and architecture concerning the human body, soul, and spirit. He has a Master of Research in Humanities and Cultural studies from the Consortium. He has received a Bachelor and a Diploma in architecture from the University of Damascus, where he became research assistant. He practised architecture in Damascus and worked at some leading architectural offices before moving to London to do a Masters in architecture and urbanism at AA DRL. Ahmad enjoys designing by algorithms, studying ethics, and contemplating walls. His design research with G_nome received an AA DRL project distinction and was presented in various architectural magazines and books including AD and the exhibition book of the Architecture Biennial of Beijing, 2006. It was exhibited on different occasions and has won the FEIDAD Award (Design Merit), 2006. Ahmad worked at Zaha Hadid Architects on the Pierres Vives Building in Montpellier, France, 2006. He was a finalist in AA DRL TEN Pavilion competition, 2007. His entry to Sham Spiritual Oasis competition received a citation, 2008. Both entries were exhibited in Syria and Turkey, 2009. He published the Arabic version of his fictional story about walls Walls Are Bored With Me: To the Walls of Fairuz, Zaha, my Mother, and Scheherazade in al-Adab (9-10/2010), one of the Arab World’s most prestigious literary journals. He performed a musical play of it to substantial audiences at prestigious venues in Damascus, 2009. Through the theme of walls, he brings together issues of art, politics, identity, gender, spirituality, and architecture. http://ahmadsukkar.tripod.com
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Tom Vandeputte (MRes 2010) is a researcher, writer and editor based in London and Amsterdam. He graduated with distinction from the London Consortium after completing his studies at the Delft University of Technology and ETH Zürich with distinction and honourable mentions. His collaborative practice encompasses research, writing, editing, and publishing projects. Since 2011, Tom is a lecturer in visual cultures at the Free University Amsterdam and teaches media theory at the Institute of the Arts in Arnhem. Before, he was a course teacher and visiting lecturer in the postgraduate programmes of the University of Amsterdam and TU Delft. As a writer, he has contributed to a variety of publications and magazines, among which Log (New York) and Volume (Amsterdam). Since 2008, Tom has been a member of the editorial board of OASE (Rotterdam). He is currently writing his doctoral thesis at the London Consortium. www.tomvandeputte.nl up
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Andrea Vesentini holds a BA in Anglo-American literature and culture and Arabic language, and an MA in English and American Studies from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His PhD research at the London Consortium focuses on suburbia as a topos in modern American fiction (especially film), and on how this architectural space relates to issues of cultural identity. He worked at the 2011 Venice Biennale and has been a contributing film critic for online magazines for several years. He was also a student at the City College of New York, Georgia State University in Atlanta and La Sapienza University of Rome.
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William Viney’s PhD research focuses on the presence of waste in literature, sculpture and architecture. He has a BA in English and Development Studies from the University of Sussex and an MA in English Studies from the University of Durham. A record of his current research can be found here: http://narratingwaste.wordpress.com/
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Eline van der Vlist is an independent curator and researcher. She obtained her Masters in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute in London (with distinction). Her Ph.D. research at the London Consortium focuses on the theoretical and critical discourse associated with exhibiting African contemporary art, under supervision of Augustus Casely-Hayford and John Picton. She has been awarded AHRC funding. Recent curatorial projects include MultiPistes, a multistage collaborative arts project across various locations in Europe and Africa. Eline is part of the curatorial team of imagine art after, a project whereby artists who have made their home in London enter into a dialogue with artists who have remained in the country of origin. The dialogues were published in 2005 on the Guardian web site, and after the dialogues, newly commissioned works were exhibited at Tate Britain in 2007. A new edition of the project launched in 2009.
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Annabelle von Girsewald is researching ‘HomeBodies’, which she defines as complex situations of not feeling-at-home, inverting the American term. Her research is based in the practice of a curatorial process-orientated project (see www.annabelleshome.com). Her aim is to reconfigure the notion of ‘home’ together with international artists, curators, and architects and by revisiting thinkers such as Frederick J. Kiesler and Gaston Bachelard. The first part of the project is a conference, which will in turn determine the development of 3 basement exhibitions to take place in San Francisco, Frankfurt am Main, and London. Annabelle has recently worked at the Serpentine Gallery and Louise T Blouin Institute and formerly for museums and galleries in Frankfurt am Main. She holds degrees in Women’s Studies, Art History, Empirische Kulturwissenschaft, and American Studies.
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Oisin Wall holds a BA in History and Philosophy from University College Cork and an MRes in Humanites and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium. He is currently writing a PhD on the use of the idea of madness in various liberatory theories between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1960s. His thesis focuses on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, first-wave Futurism, Surrealism, the Beat Generation and Anti-Psychiatry. His current research interests revolve around the early twentieth century avant-garde movements and the social and political radicalism of the late 1950s and 1960s.
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Richard Whitby is an artist and writer, working on ‘Live Spectacle in Neo-Liberal Britain’. Arena spectaculars (whose spiritual home is the O2 arena in London), major sporting events and contemporary stagings of grand opera are proposed as symptoms of a mediatised, still largely cinematic ’screen culture’ and attendance at such events a ritualised (sometimes obligatory) demonstration of fandom for the spectator. The nostalgic impulses behind many ‘live’ resuscitations of old narratives and tropes are suggested as particularly resonant within a British response to neo-liberal politics and economic relations. Richard has a BA in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art (2007) and an MA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art (2009).
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Raymond van de Wiel holds an MA in English Literature from Utrecht University, The Netherlands and completed his MRes at the London Consortium in 2007. His PhD research focuses on the early texts of Gilles Deleuze and aims to contribute to the debate about the political utility of Deleuze’s metaphysics. See also www.raymondvandewiel.org
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Wei Yu received his MA degree in Art History and Art Criticism from the Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan in 2003, and has served as an editor for ARTCO magazine (Taiwan) during 2005-2007. He is currently working as an art critic and a correspondent writer. His PhD focuses on Taiwanese avant-garde art in the post-martial law period.
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